Reverse the Circumstances

I’m not much into alternative history, because there may be an infinite number of forks in the road, but this is entertaining… and a take on things, from April 1861… (it appeared in the April 23, 1861 edition of the Staunton Spectator).

Reverse the Circumstances.

If there were any reason left amongst the people of the North, says the Baltimore Sun, we should think it would assert its power by an argument to the popular feeling there. Only imagine Jefferson Davis elected as a sectional candidate of the South, and an avowed propagandist of slavery, menacing the North with an “irrepressible conflict” and a declared purpose to spread the institution throughout the free States, in open violation of the constitution. Suppose the New England States to have seceded, and the Davis administration to be directing armed boats against them to war against them, and troops from Maryland venturing through the city of New York for that purpose, and the forts of New York harbor pointing their guns upon and threatening the city, and we have at once the converse of the affray in the streets of Baltimore, and the capture of Fort Sumter. A rational man can have no difficulty in realizing facts and feelings, by changing the position and bringing the argument home to himself in a parallel case.

What a great editorial, and it poses an interesting counterfactual scenario, even if the reference to an “open violation of the constitution” goes a bit too far in justifying the first wave of secession. What is most interesting about this to me is to imagine the ways in which federal power plausibly could have been used to make slavery a greater presence in the free states. It reminds me of Paul Finkelman’s “An Imperfect Union,” in which the breakdown of federal comity led to numerous lawsuits by slave owners challenging free states’ restrictions on slave owners’ rights to sojourn or transit through free states with their slave property. The Civil War prevented most of those cases from being settled in federal courts, but it is interesting to imagine what the result would have been if federal courts had ruled in the slave holders’ favor.

Thanks for the comment, Matt. Yes, I agree on all counts. Also, it struck me as fascinating to see folks, then, think of something counter-factual. Just a very interesting take, in the middle 19th century, on real time history. I don’t know if I’ve seen something like it before.